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Connecting to Microsoft Online Services via PowerShell Sessions

It can be fairly annoying to have to run several different sets of commands in your PowerShell console window just to connect to the service online that you are working on.

John Weber and I were having a discussion about how annoying it was, and he and I couldn’t help but ask: “Is there an easier way?”

Utilizing Windows PowerShell, we cumulatively came up with the idea to pass a single entering of credentials, and in turn, log into each environment we manage most in their own respective PS console environment.

I use ConEmu as my PS CLI interface of choice rather than the native console and one of the best features of ConEmu in my opinion is the tabbed console windows. I like to separate my work so I can better keep track of the commands that I am running, especially when I am running a lot of them. The idea of establishing connections in separate console windows sounded like a great idea.

Therefore, using the powers of PowerShell (pun intended) I put together a script to auto-magically do this for us.

I noticed you are using the older MSOnline PowerShell module in your examples. It may be useful to start using the newer Azure Active Directory PowerShell V2 module instead, as we will begin deprecating the MSOnline module when we have migrated the functionality of the MSOnline module to the newer module – currently planned for the Spring of 2017.

Brad Stevens

Brad Stevens is an enterprise consultant, cloud architect, and technical evangelist with over 5 years of experience providing architecture, development, consultancy and design expertise. He works at CDW, a leading re-seller of IT hardware and software and professional services solution delivery. He is based in Portland, Oregon.